Female Railway Workers in World War II

By Susan Major

During World War II women took on railway roles which were completely new to females. They worked as porters and guards, on the permanent way, and in maintenance and workshop operations. In this book Susan Major features the voices of women talking about their wartime railway experiences, using interviews by the Friends of the National Railway Museum.

Many were working in ‘men’s jobs’, or working with men for the first time, and these interviews offer tantalising glimpses of conditions, sometimes under great danger. What was it about railway work that attracted them? It’s fascinating to contrast their voices with the way they were portrayed in official publicity campaigns and in the light of attitudes to women working in the 1940s. These women talk about their difficulties in a workplace not designed for women – no toilets for example, the attitudes of their families, what they thought about American GIs and Italian POWs, how they coped with swearing and troublesome colleagues, rules about stockings. They describe devastating air raids and being thrust into tough responsibilities for the first time.

This book fills a gap, as most books on women’s wartime roles focus on the military services or industrial work. It offers valuable insights into the perceptions and concerns of these young women. As generations die out and families lose a direct connection, it becomes more important to be able to share their voices with a wider audience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Aug 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781526703101

Susan Major

Susan Major completed a PhD with the Institute of Railway Studies & Transport History at the University of York in 2012. Drawing upon material from the National Railway Museum and the British Library, she focused on early railway excursions. Her book based on this research, Early Victorian Railway Excursions, was shortlisted for the Railway and Canal Historical Society Book of the Year Awards 2017. Susan was a programme consultant for the BBC series Railways: the Making of a Nation, taking part in the episode on leisure. She is retired and lives in York.

Book preview

I Cannot Offer Them a Delightful Life

I have to tell women that I cannot offer them a delightful life. They’ll have to suffer some inconveniences, but I want them to come forward in the spirit of determination to help us through.

¹

(Ernest Bevin, 1941)

On his 57th birthday on 9 March 1941, Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour, launched a plea for 100,000 women to enrol for war work in Britain, in farms, in factories and on the railways. He and his colleagues were worried about the need to replace the men recruited into war service. But women had the care of their families to think about, and so as an incentive he announced an expansion of nursery centres and a register of childminders. Here women would only have to pay pre-war costs, at 6d. a day, with the government paying an extra 6d. for looking after the children. Bevin explained that he was hoping that this call would encourage those women who were not already in jobs, or registered for war work. Bevin calculated that for every two men away on service, three women would need to be employed, to make up the shortfall of labour. (He revised his opinion on this ratio in 1943, when addressing the Diamond Jubilee Congress of the Women’s Co-operative Guild. In a press report headed ‘Our Plane Output Beats Germany’s’, Bevin stated that his own earlier calculations had been upset by ‘the marvellous response of the women of Britain’. He admitted that the output of women, instead of being that of three women to two men, was slightly the other way compared to 1939.) At the time there was some confusion following this plea for women to step forward voluntarily, as Bevin was also introducing measures of compulsory conscription for women. ²

The idea of railway work for women was not new that year. As early as the summer of 1940, agreement had been reached between the railway companies and the National Union of Railwaymen about employing women on the railways in jobs previously done by men. They were to be paid on starting grades, subject to a three-month probationary period, receiving 4s. less than men.³

However at this time some of the media were still wary of removing the focus of women from their traditional roles. Women’s Own magazine argued in April 1941, ‘Whether or not we agree with Mr Bevin’s plans for sending women to needed jobs (and to be honest we must admit that our sex isn’t without members who might learn a lot by having to do a job of work) we all agree that it is home that matters.’⁴ But later on, women’s magazines were to play a much more active role in helping to persuade women to sign up for wartime roles. They did this by emphasising positive aspects, by helping women to develop a sense of pride in achievements gained, by lobbying for reforms, by giving advice on how to adapt, and by seeking to change the attitudes of other family members who might object to women working.⁵

While thousands of women were considering contributing to the war effort by joining the military services, or working in industry, for the many women who belonged to railway families the decision was not difficult. They might be encouraged and supported by male family members, and their path to employment eased by the men ‘putting a word in for them’. Occasionally families might look down on railway work, but for most it was regarded as a solid worthwhile job, naturally perceived to be an absolute necessity to ‘keep the trains running’. At the same time, the introduction of female labour, to be speedily trained and installed, caused some shocks to the rigid hierarchy of the railway occupational structure.

The employment of women on the railways was not new in British history. Helena Wojtczak has identified female railway labourers in the 1851 census, and there were many women working as crossing keepers around then, reflecting their historic role in policing turnpike gates. Rosa Matheson found Great Western Railway (GWR) female crossing keepers in the 1870s, and, unusually, at least one female signalwoman in 1890, working for the GWR in Devon, still there in 1913. Wojtczak found a small number of female station ‘mistresses’, or ‘clerks in charge’, from the 1830s onwards, and a female railway porter as early as 1871, at Barrow-in-Furness. There are rare examples of women working in booking offices, and in telegraph work from the 1850s onwards.⁶ A few women were working as railway clerks for the London & North Western Railway (LNWR) in 1875, when the company employed fifteen women invoice clerks, and station masters were encouraged to use their daughters as booking clerks ‘whenever there was a disposition to do so’.⁷ A correspondent in the Southern Railway Magazine reported that his mother, Miss Robinson, the daughter of a station master, was employed in the booking office at Woodgate (near Bognor Regis) before her marriage in 1863, and there was also a female booking clerk, a Miss White, at Cosham (near Portsmouth) in the 1880s.⁸

Women were working at the LNWR Wolverton Works from the 1830s, but it appears that the GWR was generally resistant to the employment of women in their workshops at this time, although women had been working at the Swindon Works in the early 1870s, first in the trimming shop and later in the laundry. There was a reason for this: Rosa Matheson suggests that Swindon took on women at this point to encourage their fathers to come, as these were the skilled men they needed. The men had been loath to move to Swindon, when there was no employment for their daughters. As a result the upholstery shop there was set up for women, with a separate entrance, to keep them away from the men. The GWR had also considered taking on female clerks in the 1870s, but had serious concerns. These centred not on their capabilities, but on the need to ensure that men and women were not working in the same office, in their eyes a most inappropriate activity. As the company would have had to construct entirely separate offices, the GWR refused to take on women clerks then. It appears that there may have been a class element shaping this, that working class women were acceptable, possibly more controllable, a known phenomenon, whereas middle class women in offices were not. It was not until 1906 that the company took on a small group of female clerks at Paddington Goods Office (although there was a female clerk at the GWR Swindon Works from 1895). The company had very fixed ideas; astonishingly during the early part of the twentieth century they were still restricting the recruitment of men into skilled jobs, by limiting applications to the sons of skilled men only.⁹

Wartime led to a greatly increased demand for labour. Although previously the few women workers had been kept mainly behind the scenes, during the First World War many women were employed in roles which could be viewed by the public, such as goods and passenger porters, parcel porters and ticket collectors, as well as behind-the-scenes work such as carriage cleaners, engine cleaners, clerks and certain workshop grades.¹⁰ Surprisingly, although cleaning might traditionally be thought of as ‘women’s work’, cleaning carriages and engines had been quite definitely a man’s job until now, a view taken by the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), who felt that young boys would be more suitable for this task. Another difficulty was said to be the unsuitability of women’s clothing, such as the voluminous skirts, for such tasks, which might involve climbing ladders. Their participation may also have been opposed on the grounds that the role of engine cleaner was traditionally seen as the first step on the ladder to be an engine driver.¹¹ But wartime necessity changed the rules and many women took on the work of cleaning carriages and engines in place of men.¹² Very few were able to remain however after the war, and it was not until the 1930s that women were allowed to be carriage cleaners again.¹³ By the time the First World War ended in 1918, there were nearly 70,000 women in the railway workforce, around 16 per cent of the total.¹⁴ Some came back to heed the call during the Second World War.

By 1939 the employment of women to replace men on the railways was a growing phenomenon in Britain: men were rapidly disappearing and women were starting to be taken on. There were already 26,000 women working, out of a total workforce of nearly 600,000, in traditional female roles such as clerical and secretarial tasks, catering, carriage cleaners and crossing keepers. It has even been suggested that female railway recruitment during the Second World War was a significant factor in winning the war, as volunteer civilians were not mobilised in Germany in the same way.¹⁵ The Railway Clerks Association (RCA) (which eventually became the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) in 1951) highlighted the increasing number of women working in railway offices.¹⁶ Their General Secretary, W. Scott, admitted that he was not asking the Railway Staff National Tribunal for equal pay for these women, although he suggested that many, especially the senior women, would have had a good claim as they were in his words ‘exploited and underpaid’.¹⁷ Attitudes in the RCA towards women were more supportive than the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) however, as women clerks in female salary grades were often better educated and more vocal, possibly looking at railway careers, and taking part in RCA discussions.¹⁸

In December 1939, after the war had started, the GWR started to consider taking on women porters.¹⁹ Kathleen Hall recalled being one of the first being taken on by GWR as a ‘lad porter’ at 17, at Stratford-upon-Avon Station.²⁰ There was a certain lack of confidence by the railway companies in the abilities of women to take on this new task. The plan was to ‘give the women a spell in the warehouses, presumably to toughen them up a bit, and then transfer them to station platforms’. Typically the press addressed this move in syndicated newspaper articles, adopting a jaunty tone, orchestrated centrally by the British Railways Executive:

So we may soon be greeted as we step from the train by the helpful suggestions of another recruit to the trousered regiments in blue, who will perhaps raise a questioning finger in the approved manner and then whisk away one’s bags and golf clubs.²¹

Publicity officers and journalists had some difficulty in treating the new women workers straightforwardly, never being able to report on them without including elements of femininity. There were underlying concerns about their abilities, their ‘feminine’ characteristics, the threat to ‘men’s’ jobs and a refusal to see women as more than ‘decorative objects’, unless they had ‘proved themselves’. Women often featured in press stories which linked them to their husbands’ and fathers’ roles, or had to demonstrate that they were still carrying out traditional responsibilities, such as looking after a household, large families and elderly relatives, in addition to long hours in their new railway jobs. In a poem published at the end of 1939, the Daily Herald decided that access to a porter’s tip might make women more willing to subject themselves to what would now be known as ‘mansplaining’:²²

Whenever I have tried

To give advice to dames,

They’ve usually replied

With silence – or with Names

But at no distant date,

It’s easy to foresee,

They’ll find I carry weight –

And take a tip from me. (H.R.)

Looking at relationships with a modern perspective, it is quite difficult to comprehend the attitudes to women and their interests and abilities at that time. A wartime view on the role of women in society appeared in a draft 1942 Mass Observation file report by Tom Harrisson, one of the founders of Mass Observation.²³ In Appeals to Women, he sets the scene on how the press might persuade women to respond to the manpower crisis, assessing their ‘limited horizons’:

As this war gradually moves towards its fourth year, more and more does it become, on the Home Front, a war of women. At first women played the more negative role of keeping the home going and carrying most of the small worries. Now every available female body is required in a war factory or uniform. Never before in our history has the State had to interfere with the lives of so many people so quickly and so drastically, and particularly never before has it had so much to do direct with women. In normal times, most major decisions of personal conduct are determined largely by a husband or father or fiancé, and without anybody having thought about it very much, most of the instructions, directions, legislations are based on this assumption and are addressed by men to men. Talking to women is limited largely to small matters, particularly concerned with the spending of the wage packet. And on the whole it has to be admitted that the majority of women have been content with this situation. The vigorous suffragette movement did not steadily grow, but faded right away once the vote for women had been won, as if the vote was some sort of final triumph.

The idea presented here is that keeping the home going under extremely difficult conditions was seen as a ‘negative role’, as opposed to male war service. Harrisson goes on to use evidence collected by the Mass Observation investigators to contrast the attitudes of older women who came in voluntarily – keen and patriotic – with that of the younger conscripts, who were not so positive.²⁴ He also suggests that women suffered from tiredness, boredom and apathy, and that there were worries about enforced mobility. This is not surprising as these women had households to run and children and elderly relatives to look after, as well as long hours working on the railway.

Women had to play their part in the war effort. Early in 1941 Bevin announced that under the Registration for Employment Order, women in certain age groups must register for war work, with no ‘class distinctions and no exceptions’, apart from women in the forces and those in nursing. On 19 April 1941 it was the turn of women aged 20 to register, and women aged 21 shortly afterwards.²⁵ Registration involved an interview, with the noting of family occupations. Women could choose from a range of jobs, for example the women’s military services (no use of any ‘lethal weapon’ without her written consent), civilian defence, or work in industry, often in armaments factories. If they were without family ties then they would be considered ‘mobile’ and could be asked to work in other parts of the country.²⁶

Bevin had also introduced the Essential Work Order (EWO) in March 1941. This tied workers to jobs considered essential for the war effort and prevented employers from sacking workers without permission from the Ministry of Labour. By December 1941, the government had passed the National Service Act (no 2), which legalised the conscription of women into the women’s auxiliary services, civil defence and certain industries.²⁷ At first, only unmarried women and childless widows aged 21-30 were called up, but this was later extended to 19-43. By mid-1943, it was reported that almost 90 per cent of single women and 80 per cent of married women were employed in essential work for the war effort.²⁸

The railways were beginning to lose men in great numbers. The Military Training Act in May 1939 applied to single men aged between 20 and 22, requiring them to undertake six months’ military training, and around 240,000 registered for service.²⁹ On 3 September 1939, the National Service (Armed Forces) Act imposed conscription on all males aged between 18 and 41, who had to register for service unless they were medically unfit or in key industries and jobs. The previous year a Schedule of Reserved Occupations had been drawn up, exempting certain key skilled workers from conscription. These included five million men: railway and dockworkers, miners, farmers, agricultural workers, schoolteachers and doctors. The schedule also prescribed age ranges for being ‘reserved’, which were subject to review, especially in the light of the recruitment of women to fill these occupations. It included, among many more obvious trades, some surprising people, such as architects, bacteriologists, bedding makers, slipper makers, BBC administrative and executive grades, time and motion study experts, chefs de cuisine, typewriter repairers, French polishers, goldsmiths and silversmiths, glass decorators, stained glass fitters, gem polishers, masseurs, bookbinders, statisticians and trade union officials.³⁰

Railway workers to be ‘reserved’ were categorised as executives, managers, inspectors and agents; engine drivers and shed foremen; firemen, engine cleaners and shed workers; linesmen, gangers, signalmen and platelayers; porters, foremen and goods workers; ticket collectors, guards, shunters, examiners and crossing keepers; railway clerks. With the removal of buffet and dining cars from trains, male railway stewards became liable to be called up for military service, and when these cars were introduced again it was women who worked on them.³¹

In preparation for war it was arranged that the undertakings of the main line railway companies and the London Passenger Transport Board should be controlled by the government, in the form of the Railway Executive Committee (REC).³² The headquarters of the ‘big four’ railway companies moved out of London. By the end of 1939 staff from the Paddington headquarters of the Great Western Railway (GWR) had been evacuated to a mysterious newly constructed location in the countryside, near Aldermaston, with ‘staff special’ daily trains bringing in the workers from their home towns.³³ The need to recruit women failed to rise to the top of the agenda for their company magazine however, where the role of women was confined to announcements about Railway Queens (see page 147) and reports of open days at the Swindon Works, when visitors included parties of ‘young ladies’:

They are, of course, conducted with the same decorum as other parties, but if glances are more eloquent than words, their interest in men and machines is divided, and more than one dashing apprentice has felt his heart thump against his boiler-suit when those ‘lovelies’ pass by.³⁴

Around this time there were some female GWR railway clerks photographed in the company magazine, working alongside men in temporary offices in railway carriages.³⁵ Clearly there was a demarcation of roles here, the men had telephones and pens in their hands, the women were working at typewriters.

The staff magazine of the London Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) featured a monthly page for women during 1939, written by Agnes Neville, as the company felt the need to address the interests of female members of railway families. This was aimed at housewives in traditional roles, with paragraphs for example in January on bargains in the shops, what the Queen was wearing, garden birds and mushrooms (readers were advised how to detect if the latter were poisonous, using a silver spoon in the pan). Later issues included beauty tips, household hints and cooking, especially jam, which featured at great length across several issues. However, unusually, in April 1939, the company also devoted a whole issue to its women workers. It highlighted women working as telephone exchange operators, waiting room inspectresses, an ambulance sister at Wolverton Works, a range of clerical workers in supervisory positions, hotel and laundry workers, company hospital staff at Crewe Works, French polishers at Derby Works, staff uniform and sheet factory workers at Manchester, clerks at Derby Ticket Sorting Office (where all the tickets were returned, sorted and processed), stewardesses on cross-channel steamers, and women ambulance teams.³⁶ The company was keen to involve female relatives too, and included two competitions restricted to women entrants, one for photography and another for the best household hint. It was suggested that ‘in the house and in the garden there are dozens of happy little incidents each day’ which might form subjects for a photograph. It may be ‘the children, pets, father up to his tricks’. Emphasis was placed on subjects depicting ‘happiness at home’.³⁷

The London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) had previously employed many women in certain jobs, for example in LNER grain sack depots. This business had passed on to the railway companies in the 1870s, when it was felt that they could do a better job than a private company, looking after the complex business of hiring out sacks for grain carried by rail, making sure they were returned and accounting for their supply. LNER had three million sacks, hired from depots based in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, York and Lincoln.³⁸ In another setting, a large number of women were employed in the LNER laundry at Colchester. There was a lot to do, as the laundry serviced hotels, refreshment rooms, dormitories, steamships and offices in the Great Eastern and London section of the southern area, cleaning over eight million items each year. Writers in the staff magazine could not however resist making comments about physical appearance: there were around 80 to 100 girls, ‘some of them athletic but not one of them unattractive’, and 14 men.³⁹

By September 1939 LNER was also on a wartime footing, with senior staff moving out to a country mansion near Hitchin, mysteriously known as HQ1.⁴⁰ A humorous staff magazine, The Ballyhoo Review, was produced weekly by staff for staff, between September 1939 and May 1940, and included comical pen portraits of office staff, of which there were a number of women. For example ‘Ladies of the Engineer’s Dept’ featured in January 1940, where Miss M. Smythe was ‘A problem from Ilford, Essex. Saturated with the dogma of neo-sensation. Dynamic and devastating, good company if you can stand the pressure’. Again a Miss Todd was ‘Modest, sympathetic, discreet and tactful, the very antithesis of Miss Smythe above! Originally a Londoner but now a village lass. Has a rumoured affection for a toddy’.⁴¹

With wartime shortages developing in 1940, the government was keen to recruit 250,000 women into manufacturing jobs in the iron and steel industry, reducing the long hours being worked by men and freeing them for war service.⁴² On the railways, male railway clerks aged 25 to 30 had now been called up, as they were no longer ‘reserved’, and so there was a growing need to fill their places with women.⁴³ In April 1940 the REC Staff Committee asked for information from the railway companies about shortages. They wanted to know which areas were affected by problems of recruiting suitable male labour for railway work, which grades, whether the present and future shortages could be met by employing women, and if so in which grades.⁴⁴ Many of the men who had been released from the railways for war service had been porters, carriage cleaners and porter signalmen. While some men in the workforce had been able to move up a grade, it left grade 2 porters, goods porters and carriage cleaners in demand (many women were already doing the latter work). There was also a need for ticket collectors, carters, and a range of assistants in railway workshops. There was much discussion however about how this might affect the progression of men when they returned from the war. The situation was getting worse. In July 1940 the GWR reported a serious shortage of guards, which was preventing the running of some trains. They recognised the need to recruit women as ticket collectors, so that men could be released as guards and shunters. The idea of women being recruited as guards was problematic at first, as male guards had spent many years working their way up the hierarchy to achieve this position. Now it was being suggested that women might be brought in to do the job after a few weeks training. However all of the companies started to recruit women in this post in the early 1940s: GWR were the first to do so, with 46 female guards by 1942.⁴⁵ GWR had already taken on over 2,000 women, mostly porters (over 1,300), but also van guards and ticket collectors. By the end of 1942 they also had 976 female carriage cleaners.⁴⁶

The Railway Executive Committee (REC) produced a paper outlining the need for a coordinated publicity strategy on behalf of the railway companies, with ‘new experiments to meet war-time conditions’, including the need to employ women.⁴⁷ But this move failed to find much favour with Southern Railway. In October 1940 SR responded, arguing against some of the points in the document, worried that their hard-fought company reputation would be buried in a coordinated campaign.

Certain attitudes to women prevailed in railway staff magazines. In January 1940, Carry On, the LMS wartime newsletter, captioned a photograph of women clerks, ‘She tells them where to Get off’ and these women were said to offer an ‘added attraction’ to passenger enquiries at Euston.⁴⁸ In August their views on women were still patronising, with a photo of a woman collecting LMS salvage for the war effort captioned ‘Little Gel’.⁴⁹ By September 1940, LMS were recruiting women to replace railway porters in London, inspired by the recruitment of women to replace male bus conductors there.⁵⁰ As many as 250 women had already been recruited for the Midlands and North, many were married women, the relatives of railwaymen, reinforcing the idea of ‘the railway family’.⁵¹ This was a commonly used characteristic, suggesting that the reputation of a woman worker might be ‘safer’ when displayed in the light of a male relative and/or, rather surprisingly, a large family of dependent children. The new LMS recruits were to be employed at the main goods depots, and would receive eight days training (three days theory and five under the supervision of a male porter). Their work would be the loading and unloading goods up to 75lb, which might include bedsteads, bales of cloth, ploughs, rubber tyres and drums of oil and paint. In a syndicated article about LMS, appearing in many publications and tightly controlled, one woman said:

It’s a bit tough at first, but we’ve not been long in getting down to the job. Now I wouldn’t like to leave it. We get on very well together, and manage to get a lot of fun out of the work as well. Of course it’s no film star’s job. We’ve got no time for lipstick or powder, and we haven’t got to be afraid of dirtying our hands or faces.⁵²

There were plenty of jokes about ‘Oh Mrs Porter’. A Times article from October 1940, reproduced by some regional newspapers, and proudly highlighted in Carry On, waxed lyrically about the new ‘lady porters’ being employed by LMS, with a patronising sarcasm and a short poem:

Send me back to London

As quickly as you can;

O dear Miss Porter

What a silly boy I am!⁵³

By November 1940, the Manchester Guardian was offering a first prize of two guineas and second prize of one guinea for